


but there will never be another camelot

by soliloquium



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: All is not what it seems, Angst, Character Death, Crime, Human AU, M/M, Murder Mystery of Sorts, a culture divide, alfred has a terrible sense of humor, allusions to sex, and other adult themes, and they are both very messed up, baker?? ivan, journalist alfred
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:54:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22512085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soliloquium/pseuds/soliloquium
Summary: I wandered lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o’er vales and hillsAlfred spends his days chasing after headlines. Ivan spends his confined to a quiet street in Brooklyn. It is terrible, you know, to fall for someone who dreams of different worlds."You know, Mr Braginsky, you're awfully calm for someone whose husband just died."
Relationships: America/Russia (Hetalia)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 52





	1. Chapter 1

"He's dead, isn't he?"  
  
The officer fumbles with the recorder. A screech of the leg of the chair against the linoleum. Ivan does not flinch.  
  
"Yes. You don't seem particularly surprised about this, Mister Jones."   
  
"It's Braginski," Ivan corrects, his voice robotic, pale eyes glowing, grey scribbles of crows feet under his eyes. He is a ghostly vessel wrapped in a tartan scarf, "and this was inevitable. That's what everyone told me."  
  
A cigarette lighter, his eyebrow raising in automated intimidation tactics. He's a federal investigator with a hundred high-profile cases written into his finger tips and yet the man before is as blank as snow, "You're awfully calm for someone whose husband just died."  
  
The corners of Ivan's lips move up in a way that is both slow and painful; he is little more than a marionette, reacting reluctantly to the tugs of string, "I'm relieved."  
  
A pause. "If you walk into a cancer ward, you'll find people who are waiting to die. That's the worst part of it; worse than first being told, worse than actual dying. The constant agony of knowing that death is centimeters from your face, caressing your skin with his ghastly fingers every so often, giving you a little taste of hell with every touch. The touches happen again and again until you're just tired. Until you secretly wish he would just stop teasing you. Until one day, despite the protests from your crying mother, you ask the doctor for release. Living as a skeleton is so much worse than being one."   
  
Ivan's eyes are so very icey.  
  
"This was the release. This was his euthanasia."

* * *

Ivan had always imagined dying young. But he was twenty two now and the years were quickly fleeing. 

After twenty five, people stopped the onslaught of pity. It was there, obviously, but there was no notion of stole innocence, no ‘he hadn’t even seen the world yet’ by far away aunts who loved crying over tragedy that wasn’t theirs.   
  
Ivan felt like he hadn’t seen anymore of the world than when he was sixteen. He’d grown taller, definitely, and his propensity for being stared at when shirtless had grown too, but his horizons still ended and began on that little street on the outskirt of Boston where you could still pick out half the people on the road at any given time and name them. Except after 11 because no one was ever on the road after 11 because they were in bed because they were morning people because the community was chalk full of Russians.   
  
But, regardless, tiny coffins were tragic and beautiful and people cried over them. (Ivan couldn’t imagine anyone crying over him after twenty-five, frankly, except perhaps Katyusha who cried about everything.)   
  
Back in that snowy little coven of a village in Russia, where real world events never seemed to apply (the stock market crash, policies that people protested against), Death was the only event that ever ended up in the newspapers. They were such a tiny town that the loss of a single member shook them so greatly that they trembled. A tiny but necessary screw in the machine was gone.   
  
And Ivan had never felt apart of that machine.   
  
Death, maybe, could change that. All discarded metal ended up in the same heap.   
  
So he liked to imagine dying. Everyone did sometimes. Even he had to admit, however, that sometimes when chopping carrots he paused for a little too long, imagined the heavy weight of the knife accidentally plunging into his stomach.   
  
Or purposefully. Into his wrists.   
  
The knife was so very sharp, so very real.   
  
And the idea of living scared him so much that today, he paused again, on the side walk. Without a knife in hand. The cold cutting through his thin jacket spurr his thoughts further.   
  
Only three years left to die. One thousand and something days.   
  
It’s past eleven pm. The prosaic buildings are huddled together in the melancholy dim light of the street lights, their windows are eyes, judging him. There is the sound of a car. And Ivan is seized with a frenzy of panic and he doesn’t know why but he takes a step forward onto the road and waits for an impact that never arrives.   
  
A tire just barely shoves against the tip of his shoe. Toppling him over in the opposite direction in a way that was not lethal or tragic.   
  
A failed mission and a concussion. Lovely.   
  
Distantly, across some mountains somewhere, he hears boyish yelps of apologies and admonishing. Eventually, a face comes into view. The street light illuminating blonde hair into gold. Shiny wise blue eyes. It’s so beautiful Ivan aches.   
  
Icarus. He thinks. Before loosing consciousness. 

* * *

It begins sweetly, like candy, like rotting teeth.  
  
Alfred is young, beautiful and everything about him stands out on the background of this world. his hair is too yellow, teeth too white, eyes too blue.   
  
and his fingers are so very skilled in teasing out something Ivan didn't know he had.  
  
"A Russian restaurant," Ivan keeps his voice light, playful. so much so that there's an undercurrent of an insult somewhere, "I can't tell if I should be flattered that you paid this much attention or offended by the racism. I'm fully capable of eating an average hamburger at an average McDonalds."  
  
"The way you say 'average McDonalds' makes you seem like a James bond villain, what do you expect," Alfred complains, his eyes scanning the menu but not reading,"Besides, you don't take someone that you hit with a car to McDonalds for an apology dinner." Alfred reassesses himself, "Unless you earn, like, minimum wage and live in centeral New York with three kids. Then it's okay. Did they not teach you that in Russian boot camp?"  
  
"No, they did not teach us how to compensate for narrowly avoiding to run people over in Russian Boot Camp. I believe Americans call it school."  
  
"Because you didn't have cars?" Alfred asks, empathetic.  
  
"No, because, and this may surprise you, but crossing the Atlantic does not magically transport you to the 19th century."  
  
"Crazy," Alfred squints at the Russian words written in pretty cursive print before, his finger running down it clumsily, "How about this?"  
  
Ivan fights to keep his delight as he watches the devastation on crawl onto Alfreds face as he explains that, yes, despite it being in main courses it is potato soup and no the potato famine was not in Russia or this century, in fact, and did Alfred perhaps obtain all his worldly knowledge off watching PBS kids?  
  
It's so fucking easy. They've known each other exactly 57 hours and Ivan shouldn't feel his stomach clench with warning butterflies but can you blame him, really, when he's never imagined being able to do this. To sit at a table for two with a boy with only a meter of white table cloth and flowers in between. To be surrounded by triumphant clinks of glasses and the hum of familiar laughter and to make up some of it because as soon as Alfred had begged for his phone number after the accident for a make up dinner, Ivan had been besotted.   
  
To text a stranger at 3 AM about how angry the word colonel made you because, with all due respect, it's pronunciation was fucking stupid and have them disagree. Loudly. On voice message.  
  
Because Ivan, at his core, was a lonely boy brought up in a closet, foot long wall of wood distancing him from every possible interaction and he'd never been one to laugh much. Until now.

* * *

Alfred has ragged finger nails. Ivan offers to file them, because after watching Alfred's culinary expertise, assumes he's incapable. He gets laughed at but that's alright because Alfred's nose scrunches his nose in a way that's impossibly cute when he laughs.  
  
In the blue dawn, Ivan notices Alfred hands are perpetually stained with ink. His fingers trace the splatters like they're tender scars or secrets. The map of Alfred's palms. Ivan can't help but press his lips.  
  
"Little obsessed with hands, aren't you, buddy?" Alfred mumbles and Ivan feels him shivering in fear of this new found intimacy. Ivan pushes him still. Kisses to the sensitive flesh of Alfred's neck. Because he can.  
  
Alfred wraps his arms around Ivan's vast back, leans his head away to give him room, more of a surrender than an invitation. You win, it says, because there's a lot of words that act as grenades and this is one of them.  
  
"Your room's so fucking empty. Didn't I tell you to spruce it up a bit? You make it look like Ted Bundy lives here. If someone ever gets murdered, you know, you'll be the police's first suspect, because of this damn room."   
  
"Sorry," a particularly deep bite. Bruises, hickeys, they felt like a home address. "Next time I'll buy a bunch of marvel posters to emulate you, Mr Interior design."  
  
There's a moan somewhere as Ivan tugs up the covers, bolder touches, a little cave of fire-hot skin. Ivan does something with his hands that makes Alfred loose it.  
  
"Fucking serial killer," Alfred groans because thats how they say I love you.   
  
Ivan chuckles.  
  
and  
  
devours him.

* * *

He imagines, now, the romance of couple corpses. Two bodies decaying side by side. Were they a suicide, an honour killing perphaps, maybe the result of a jealous homocide.   
  
Together among the flowers and earth. Hands touching. They must’ve been each other’s last sight. Last breath. The bones in their fingers will be found intertwined when they find them after months. Spring will go, along with the grass and friendly caterpillars and bird songs, and they will be buried under the snow.   
  
Romeo and Juliet. The most tragic romance.   
  
Better than dying young, even.

* * *

They laid on the bed, Alfred on top of Ivan, both facing the ceiling. Ivan had his arms wrapped around Alfred’s waist, Alfred’s hands were outstretched. Like that scene from the titanic. Like Alfred was ready to catch the sun.   
  
Feeling a sleepy intimacy settle in his bones, Ivan nuzzled into the crock of Alfred’s neck. Only to get an elbow and hiss in return, “your nose is cold as fuck.”  
  
”Not my problem,” Ivan told him cheerfully, pinching Alfred’s side.   
  
A rasperry blown. Ivan could feel the stutter of air leave Alfred’s body. The thunder of breathing, “ s’gonna be Christmas soon.” Alfred pointed out, “you should take me home to your parents. I make quite the arm candy."  
  
And the warmth left, “no.”  
  
”No?"  
  
”They’re Russian. I don’t think they’d take kindly to me bringing someone with a penis home.”  
  
”Sounds homophobic. And transphobic. Not everyone transitions down there, y'know, Ams wrote an article about it actually.”  
  
”I don’t think my parents know what trans people are.”  
  
”Absolutely wack. Typical of good Russian stalk,” Alfred turned around so his face was buried into Ivan’s chest. “Not to flex but my dads pretty famous. He’s like the European Gordon Ramsey.”  
  
”Isn’t Gordon Ramsey already European?”  
  
”Brexit. Duh.”  
  
”I don’t think political deals effect how continents work. Anyways, does he too have a YouTube channel dedicated to spitting out food? .”  
  
”Not the point & yes. Anyways, my mums a tv anchorwoman. Her wife’s a good morning show host.”  
  
”Her wife?”  
  
”Divorced.”  
  
Silence. A bunch of crows fluttered away from their calving. A clutter of cooes  
  
“What-they don’t have divorce in Russia?” Alfred peered down at Ivan curiously, propping himself up.   
  
“Not really, actually. Once you’re married, you’re family. You can’t keep your spouse from being your spouse like you can’t keep your sibling from being your sibling. You have duties to each other.”  
  
”That doesn’t sound healthy.”  
  
For once, the irritation in Ivan’s voice was real, “Divorce doesn’t sound healthy either. I like it better this way. I’d rather be chained to one person forever than go from person to person, just getting _bored_ every five months."  
  
”Is that what the Christian women in your street say about Americans?” Alfred pressed, tight lipped in his grim amusement.   
  
It was. But that wasn’t the point, “I like long term.”  
  
”I like the Fourth of July. There’s no fun without fireworks.”  
  
”My dad was a handy man back in Russia. He’d do odd jobs. Help re-constructing a roof. Fixing bathrooms and floor tiles. He’d be out a lot when I was a kid, real back breaking work, whilst my mom farmed in the garden, cooked for five people and raised her three kids. I don’t think they spoke much back then; the only alone time they had was after eleven pm and by then they were dead tired of the life they lived. But they continued. Even they weren’t so much as living as they were going through the motions. Because they loved their families.”  
  
”But that’s _sad-_ "  
  
”That’s struggling. It’s what you do when you don’t have the luxury of choosing. My dad dropped out of school at fourteen. My mom doesn’t have a favorite book. Or movie for that matter. The only glimpses of tv she had were the snatches of time we’d force her to watch Pokemon with us.”  
  
”Okay.”  
  
”Okay?”  
  
”Okay, life was hard for your parents, I don’t get what you mean, though. Do you _want_ the rest of the world to be miserable that they don’t get the choice?”  
  
”I,” but Ivan didn’t really know the answer; he had never really cared enough to examine the past. Let alone defend it. He’d always thought of the American Dream as the shiney ideal that everyone should strive for. And he hadn’t thought very hard either.   
  
Alfred’s dismissal had set fire to a very dormant resentment.   
  
“I just think people should stick together.” He responded flatly, “for the children.”  
  
a snort.   
  
“I sure hope we never have children then.”

* * *

Alfred opened a door; a ripple effect of introductions, the worlds of sun-kissed Honolulu, the dusty roads of El Paso, the towering, glass sky scrapers of New York, Crescent city, Dallas to Cincinnati, Cleveland. And their stories. A dead new born found in the back seat of a Chevrolet, a new wanna-be Ted Bundy, a congressman caught with his hand up a teenage girl's skirt, a teenage boy's questionable death at the hands of police, four different cases of missing children.  
  
"The world is full of horrors," Ivan's fingers were wrapped around a warming cup of coffee. There was milky pattern of a heart splattered on top. Cute. It was Ivan's first time with coffee and he wasn't sure how he felt about its bitter vibrancy compared to the solid familiarity of tea. The words out of Alfred's mouth spun around his frame of mind like stories, too terrible to be real; the worst thing that ever happened in Ivan's neighborhood was Mrs Bogomlovo loosing her purebred.   
  
"Sort of. It's the only thing that people care to read about in fine print, anyways. No one cares about good things; when has an NGO ever done anything that made CNN Breaking News? Never. It's the shitty stuff that make up the real changes in the world," Alfred scarfed down cookie after cookie.   
  
Ivan leaned forward, a tissue in his hand to wipe at a stray chocolate stain, his thumb catching on the soft skin of Alfred's cheek. Intimacy. Fondness. A date. Ivan had to remind himself of the words they used for these things, "you shouldn't eat so many you know."  
  
Alfred squinted at him, "You sayin' I'm going to get fat?"  
  
"I'm saying," Ivan had the hint of a smile, "that you won't be able run around after stray cats that clearly don't want to be petted as much as you like."  
  
"I literally have better abs than you, bro."  
  
"Sure you do."  
  
"Arm wrestle me then," Alfred challenged, his blue eyes gleaming boyishly behind his glasses, "prove yourself."  
  
"No."  
  
"Cause you're scared,"  
  
"No, because you'll loose, get sulky and change the Netflix password. The season finale of The Good Place is coming out today. I can't risk it." but Ivan's foot carefully touched Alfred's under the table, "maybe later. In the bedroom."  
  
The corner of Alfred's lip twitched up, the sun peaked out from inside his mouth, "I'll beat you there too, just wait- anyways, what was I saying? Fuck, right, journalism. The bad shit is what get's in the papers but the baddest possible shit is always political shit. You know. The white house, congress, the dirty shit hole of Washington DC. Being a reporter is a sexy job as is but the sexiest job? A political correspondent." Alfred's hands were moving, loud animated gestures that he always did when he was excited. He was pure energy, this boy, he was what books wrote of.  
  
Ivan raised his cup, trying to look not too interested, "You want to write about congressmen who have their hands up the skirts of teenage girls?"  
  
"What? No, no, no. I mean real politics. Countries and policies; the reason we go to war in places like Afghanistan, the trade deals in China, sanctions in Cuba. A bunch of old people playing chess, its unfair, really, but it's so fascinating, isn't it? That raw power to change things, a nation. And nations don't sound too big until you realize that there's a couple million people behind those names of countrys, ordinary people like you and me."   
  
Alfred was not ordinary, Ivan thought, but he nodded, his throat full of something he could not place.   
  
"And I want to write the truth about it- that's what journalism is, y'know? It's the truth. I'm fighting for the people, the american dream, all that good stuff. I'll be the most brutally honest reporter out there, just wait until I get that big break. And soon you and I will be flying all over the world, covering the next death of the next JFK. isn't that beautiful?"  
  
Ivan didn't think the death of JFK was very beautiful at all. He'd watched a movie about it, once, and all he could remember was the sheer uselessness of the death. The grim sight of a man reduced to a bleeding corpse and most striking of all was the woman in pink, the wife of what had been the most powerful man in the world, screaming as she bent over his dead body.  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alas

"What was it like being married to a legend?"  
  
There's a hunger in her eyes that Ivan's seen a million times before, that he'd wake up to every morning, that he'd think of every night right before his eyes shut. It's so innately familiar; the craving for the next big story that'd bring the world to it's knees, that would be captured decades later, in the textbooks, in the documentaries, period dramas, a piss poor imitation of the giant that had toppled them.  
  
It was that appetite, Ivan knew, that would lead her far, far away from the comfortable, sturdy sky scrapers of New York and the pallid paragraphs about Jeff Bezos' new summer house and into the mouth of the monster. One she might not make it out from.  
  
"What do you think it was like?" Ivan asks loftily.   
  
She pens something down, the recorder is on. Gentle scratchings and Ivan can't help but wonder what those loopy circles indicate, what he'd said that could possibly be worth noting. Her silky dark fringe falls in front of her almond eyes at the head tilt; she's very delicate, smooth, porcelain doll. She will most certainly not make it out of the mouth of the monster.  
  
"People said he had a very larger than life presence."  
  
A lazy nod, "That's one way to explain him. He wasn't a legend when we met but, dating him, it felt like he was."  
  
"What do you mean by that, Mr Braginsky."  
  
She leans forward, hungry. Ivan had picked her because she was young, a novice, because she was what the younger Alfred should've been. Or so he'd thought. But now Ivan can see that if you tore off their skin, you'd find the same sickly empty interior. The insatiable flaw. Appetence. They were all going to end up in the belly of the beast, awash in the acid of their own folly.  
  
"I was never sure if he was real. His magnitude seemed to eclipse reality. That's how they are; legends, myths, just stories."  
  


* * *

  
"What's it like being married to a legend?"  
  
A microphone, camera flashing, the squawking of some reporter, here or there and too much.   
  
"We're not married-" Ivan manages, confused and trying to blink the white light out of his eyes.  
  
"- yet," Alfred interrupts, all Ken-smile and charm. In a moment, he has wrapped a heroic arm around Ivan's waist, has taken a hold of the interview, informing the nobody in the bob cheerfully, "We're engaged."  
  
This is all news to Ivan, who would briskly be put down whenever he mentioned marriage. Too much fuss over one day, too many guests, too much money, too little time, he'd insist, pointing out a fake statistic about how people that never married lasted longer as a couple and that marriage was archaic and not even a real part of queer culture anyways, ( "it's legal here." "But not everywhere. This is for all of them, you know, the gays in saudi arabia and iran and uganda") (Ivan wasn't entirely sure how the persecuted gays of these countries would benefit from Alfred's ring finger being obstinately empty but he went along with it, like he did most things).   
  
Alfred babbled on, the voices turning to static to Ivan. This sort of attention was neither new nor unexpected, but Ivan still found it hard to adjust to this culture, the strange, invasive questions and unwarranted clamor. These faceless people knew far more about Ivan than Ivan did them- his address, how he and Alfred had met, which shoes he was wearing and how that signified his political associations. It was unnerving.  
  
Ivan didn't even know he had political associations until he'd read about it in the NYP.  
  
The splendor was strange too; ceilings stretched upward, more for aesthetic than reason, a curved panorama of cherubs, soft, rounded, pink figures shrouded in clouds and wings. It seemed far too menacing, the religious connotations, the wealth, all the gold inlays, and all the women and men in their thousand dollar suits and pompadour hair. Ivan would speak to them, all perfucatory; they'd explain who they were, their jobs, with an unmistakable pride, something about their intelligence or money or philanthropy, they'd ask Ivan, cautious and jealous vultures, and then their eyes would glaze over in disinterest when he'd tell them that he was just a baker.  
  
Just a baker.  
  
(Alfred had encouraged him to pursue his career further, to start a restaurant, maybe, they'd take a loan from his dad, create a few show stopping recipes that Ivan would go on to serve at the Oscars, something with class, shiny tiles and ornate chandeliers.)  
  
They'd all regard Alfred differently though. From Ivan's perspective their looks could be categorized into three ways; admiration, envy and lust.   
  
The world would love to usurp Ivan, to be the one standing in his place, by Alfred's side.   
  
His tie felt noose like; his hand reached up with a twitch to loosen it. But he was here; Alfred's hand was on his waist, heavy, warm and real and Ivan would tear his arm off Alfred's body to keep it there.  
  
They'd get married and their names would be intertwined properly, in the history books, in the bank accounts, on the deed to their new house. Inscribed into stones on their grave.   
  


* * *

  
“G-god-“ Alfred wheezed as he fell back against the bed, glasses askew, “do you always need to bruise my hips so much? Try grabbing a pen and writing your signature- less chance of a hip displacement.”  
  
”Dully noted, mister senior citizen,” Ivan hummed against his skin, a bee to a flower, pressing his lips to all the patches of pretty did discoloration, “If you’re so worried about dysplasia, I suggest drinking your milk before you go to bed. Or adding a vegetable to your meal plan. Once a week. Start slowly.”  
  
”Such blasphemy,” Alfred complained, yanking his boyfriend? Boyfriend, up for a proper lip to lip, “how do I deal with your manic suggestions...”  
  
They fucked an increasing amount. If you drew a graph, the line would shoot straight up, proportional to their fights. It was an easy way of brushing off the tension, to dispel their anger in sex. It flowed out of them. Like semen. 

  
And they liked it. The way the world flickered, fragile, out their windows whenever they started, how close they were to teetering off that invisible edge. It’d start stupidly, an innocuous comment about mayonnaise or the validity of booty shorts and then the glass would tip over.  


Ivan liked lamenting spilled milk, apparently. Which sucked because Alfred was never (and never would be) one to apologize in a relationship. 

“My backkkkkk,” Alfred whined, stretching himself once more. 

Thankfully, they had sex as an alternative to that. 

“I can massage that for you.”

”Never,” Alfred responded, getting into massage position. 

The TV was still blasting on from the other room, a static of fake voices in low volumes. Netflix was on. Some docu-series about billionaires and murders. That was where the fight had began. 

  
“You always do that,” Alfred mused, pulling off his glasses as Ivan pressed his lips to the name of his neck.

“Hm?”

”Kissing. After sex. It’s not a very masculine thing to do.”

”I suppose not.”

”Kissing in general is weird. Like where did that custom fucking start? Why is it universal? It doesn’t help us in any way- no babies will be born out of a good make out session. We aren’t propagating our species.”

“I’m glad to know the American Sex Ex system got you that far.”

”Oh god no, I didn’t learn from school. I learnt from por-ow- christ, see, you’re enjoying my pain.”

”I most definitely am,” Ivan ensures as he changes position to apply the pressure more accessibly, knees sinking into the pool of bedsheets. The television continues to buzz, “you know, gay people don’t propagate the species either. And yet here we are. And here we have been. I don’t think everything’s as simple as survival.”

”Gay people are smarter. That’s why.”

”I would’ve accepted that theory if you weren’t present as an anomaly,” Ivan jokes, once again, kissing Alfred’s shoulder blade. Alfred’s flesh hummed too, as loud as the tv if Ivan presses his head against it. Red blood cells in neat rows, swirling in veins, “but it really is ... amazing. How they’d continued to exist, preserving their stories against the wave of discrimination. For centuries.”

”Discrimination,” Alfred tasted that word in his mouth like a foreign object, “were you ever bullied?”

Ivan stopped. 

  
“Sometimes.” In the distance, he could hear it. That whisper, the hands cupped around ears cupped around horrifying words like faggot and gay and freak. Passed like hand written notes between desks, the story of Ivan’s disorder. 

(It’s been a boy, as bright and as beautiful and as intoxicating as Alfred. Loud, pink lips and long eyelashes that curved delicately against the boy’s cheek whenever he threw back his head to laugh. They’d been 12, only, and his gravity could kill. 

  
Ivan didn’t have many friends, didn’t care to have them, but followed this one boy with stumbling steps. In awe of the fact that he was allowed- picked- to be this close to the sun. 

  
And then, like icarus, he’d flown too close)

(It followed him through highschool, in the locker room, traced in fantasies and nightmares. The urge to stare at smooth pectorals and hungering after Adam’s apples and finding only the floor. Concrete linoleum, cracked tiles. Far long after after the rumors faded, after the boy’s face had evaporated from memory, Ivan had been burnt.)

”Hey,” urgency and concern, deep blue eyes like the sea and Ivan was so, so in love with him, “hey I’m right here- are you okay? You turned into ice for a moment there...”

“Sorry.” The apartment turned tangible again. 

”Don’t do that. Like, don’t ignore me, when you have bad memories, I’m right here, you know and Uh- I’m here.” His finger on Ivan’s hand, tentative. 

  
Ivan shook his head, oxygen returning slowly, “I know.” And then, “you’re here.”

”It used to be like that for me too. You know. In school. Got the word fag written across my locker in paint.”

”What?” Ivan could imagine it, a younger, childish Alfred, staring at the worlds cruelty, a carbon copy of himself. He’d kill to protect, “who did it?” Tightening hands on hands. 

  
Alfred waved his free one in dismissal, “oh just someone. Who knows. It wasn’t one person. Wasn’t one time. There was more too. People wrote me hate notes, stuffed them in my locker. They beat me up once.”

”What-?”

”Don’t ask for details,” but he continued, “more than once actually- but who cares. What I mean is. You’re not alone.”

The image was still burnt into Ivan’s mind, however, along with it a gentle simmer of rage.

But the ghosts of their childhood weren’t alone either, carbon copies, twin tragedy. God led them here. 

  
“Yeah. We’re not alone.”

* * *

  
"Do not say anything," Alfred warned as the hot dog man tersely squirted mustard, ketchup and mayoniese on the bun.

"Wouldn't dream of it. Too much food discourse these days anyways," Ivan's arm was curled gently around Alfred's waist. It was summer turning to autumn, a certain crispness in the air which made everything feel impossibly more real. The steps of men and women hurriedly pacing across cool grey stone sidewalks, too busy to smell the roses, the wailing of children in their parks. This was the kind of date Ivan appreciated; simple, natural, with no space in between.

"So you're saying we're going to find other discourse," Alfred leaned on his shoulder as they walked away.

"We wouldn't be us if we didn't."

"You know, that's weird. I don't think I've ever argued with someone as I do you," Alfred pondered, as they sat down on top of a hill. Butt to grass. Ivan looked longingly at an empty wooden bench. Alfred pointedly steered his face away.

"Is that a bad thing?"

"You challenge me in a way no one ever has. You're very... candid," Alfred offered, miserly in his own truth, plucking at a stray dandelion in boredom, "and bitchy. And judgey."

"And?" Ivan poked, curious, feeling slightly warm inside. He'd learned, by now, to superfluous from Alfred's speech, to extract the twisted compliments from the rest. Mostly at least. When Alfred did not respond, Ivan attempted to flick his forehead.

"Hey-ow, can't you let me have _any_ romantic moments. What's the point of anything if we don't feel like we're part of a sundance nominated movie," Alfred grumbled, strangely distant, light catching his glasses so his eyes were invisible, "There aren't a lot of people that make me stop and think. You call me out on a lot of my bullshit. You know? I don't like to examine things- myself too closely. Mathew once said my heart was damaged from the start. And that I needed someone to break it before I could put it back together properly."

"And I'm this person?" The warmth was sinking, "Just because Mathew said-"

"No! No, that wasn't the point-" Alfred sighed, ran a hand through his hair in open frustration, "The point is that I'm fucked up. And you know I'm fucked up and yet here you are. Tolerating my bullshit- liking some of my bullshit, even, anyways."

"I'm not exactly a saint myself," Ivan internally cringed at a few of his more humbling moments. He had a propensity for being very petty. Several expensive china sets had been discarded as a result. Even the antique chintz blue ones. He apologized, internally, to whatever Asian family's heritage he had subsequently destroyed. 

"I know. And I'm glad you're not. I couldn't imagine myself with someone boring," Alfred leaned back into the grass, some verdant, green strands were tall enough to obscure his sun kissed face. He really was gorgeous. Eyes closed in a brief moment of repose, "You know, when I was a kid I used to imagine myself dying young. I don't imagine that anymore....."

* * *

  
"You know Patrocules and Achilles. They were about to conquer troy together."

Alfred balanced on the ledge of the bridge. Careless steps forward. Ivan caught his jacket as he jerked a little too much to the right. Alfred gave him a cheesey grin. Fuck's sake.

"They died before they could do that though," Ivan reminded him, grabbing his hand instead as Alfred led the way forward, still precarious, and feeling almost motherly in his protective stance.

"Yes but they're legendary too. Everybody knows them. Patroclus was known in the Illiad for his kindness, y'know, and for his patience. He was older and wiser. Kinda reminds me of you."

"And that makes you Achilles' ? The one whose sheer unadulterated rage kills everyone?" Ivan could still remember that quote.

_No bargains between lions and men. I will eat you raw._

It was horrifying, what people could do in the name of love, really.

"They sort of deserved it though, didn't they? For taking Patroclus away? Whatever- that'll be us though. We'll conquer Troy," Alfred flashed him a lop-sided grin. 

"They didn't conquer Troy though. Not together, at least," Ivan tried to reason but smiled and smiled because this was Alfred in all his glory. So in love with ideals that reality brushed past him without hindrance. 

"Semantics! You and I though- we're going to be something special. Even if the whole world has to burn to make it happen!"

* * *

  
'But one thing more. A last request--grant it, please. / Never bury my bones apart from yours, **Achilles** , / let them lie together…/just as we grew up together in your house. ''

* * *

  
"What's it like being married to a legend?"

Ivan could hear the words loud in his head as he stumbled outside, loud as a boombox, a second heart beat, religious mantra. He fucking hated parties. It was all a game of one uppance and thinly veiled mockery. Everything was gilded to hide the rusted interior. The upper crust had no souls, nothing of real substance, the fame and the money had eroded them so much. 

And Alfred was back there, some where, talking to another ex in a silk dress that Ivan hadn't known about. A woman too. How could you love so many women if you were gay, it didn't make sense- and the way they spoke, shared intimate jokes, the familiarity that was only brought on by years of friendship. Alfred standing there laughing as her stupidly delicate white hand caressed his arm. It was unfair. It was just unfair. 

He fit in there, amongst the sycophants like a fucking puzzle piece.

This wasn't the Alfred Ivan had fallen for.

"You okay?" a vaguely indifferent voice asked and Ivan turned to be greeted with a mirror image of Alfred only slightly taller, slightly less shiny, with something cynical about his dark blue eyes. In his hand was a lit cigarette, smoldering in the dark, and he took another drag, "Ah, Alfred's husband, no wonder you're here. He gets a little eccentric at parties. Lies more than he usually does because of all that light on him. What's that proverb? Something about ants being stupid and glitter."

"I'm not his husband," Ivan managed, terse and confused.

"Soon to be," Mathew corrected himself, stubbing his cig out under his shoe as he turned around. Shadows played on his face, eerily, like he really was a distorted mirror image of Ivan's boyfriend, "but if you wanna retain your sanity, friend, I suggest you change that title. Something milder like Chary Acquaintance or Slightly Bitter Ex. It'll sting, sure, he'll make it sting. But anything is better than the alternative."

"What-?"

Alfred's brother let out a mean, sardonic little laugh, "God you don't belong here. I really hope you manage to survive him. May the odds be ever in your favor, man."

The moon stared at Ivan with aching impunity.

Pained, he turned around and marched back into the ballroom. Determined to make sure it was him at Alfred's side, whatever the cost. Whatever the world thought.

Because tomorrow, the world would say they'd gone mad. Tomorrow, the world could burn. And at the end of it all, Ivan would have Alfred, even if he'd had to shackle him for it.


End file.
